He stopped.

Moving forward meant forcing time-jello out of his way. In theory he couldn't go back or advance, but lateral and tangential moves were possible.

Maybe if I stay here long enough, my past will catch up with me, and I can change things?

He knew the theories on time, all of them. He was a self-taught expert on their permutations and was determined to take control of time's path and destination.

Time-jello sparkled, shimmered, rich bits shining in the distance, tempting the unsuspecting traveler to schlep down new directions. He licked his lips, sampling the sparkling surroundings, tasting like nothing more than electrified air.

An electric arc, a bolt of power, was always a risk if a traveler stayed too long in one place. Time, not alive and not thinking, yet re-enforcing the command to move forward or be turned to dust.

Time-jello solidified at his back. He turned, pushed, trying to face the wall of unyielding past.

The invisible, unknowing barrier stood as a monument to its actions. Committed, completed, and unchangeable. There was no break he could discern. He could neither go over nor under the hindrance.

Each time slice contained his world, frozen and inaccessible, rotting and dissolving as the time wall moved forward.

Sure, solid pieces; bones, metals, and plastics, could be examined by future paleontologists and a past life determined, written by the dead husks of the former living.

If he was a wizard, he could cleave the wall with his magic wand and exquisite time-spell, then step behind the veil. But magic isn't real. He would have to fall back on his scientific skills to find an instrument to help him.

He knew violating the time wall could have unknown and dangerous consequences, but this was his life's work, he had to find an answer.

Only sound could creep beyond the barrier, vibrations impinging on the now-solid invisible, untouchable force, carrying the past and marching toward the future.

He had a virtually unlimited amount of past to discover. Time was self-generating and self-blocking with little or no intervention by humans or the universe. Localized time maybe seemed static but is perceived as running at different speeds depending upon observation and location. A gnat, beating its wings in mating swarms, plays a tune only they understand. Each moment is a fraction of a wing stroke as they compete for mates and status. Humans think these midget flies live fast and die young, while gnats have a full life with adventure, entertainment, sex, birth, and death. It is, after all, relative.

Despite appearances, breaking into the past wasn't driven by the need to recover a lost love or a set of keys. Instead, his experiments were for scientific curiosity, and it was worth exploring as long as it didn't kill him.

He would prefer to explore time at the edge of black holes, where matter and time take on different properties, but that was not an option.

Location both limited and directed his line of inquiry. He was a human on a tiny rock and water world and had no way to travel vast distances to black holes. The problem was, again, time. There wasn't enough of it in the relatively short span he was afforded to accomplish his goals.

The fact that crossing an accretion disk's time dilation would probably end his consciousness was a problem he would not have to address. There was no way to get there from here.

The world he lived on, and the historical difficulty of leaving it, helped keep him alive. If he had anything better than the wimpy kerosene/oxygen-powered rockets, he might have a chance to test his theories. Only the rich, the well-placed, or the military elites can use these puny, slow, farty transports. FasterThanLight or Warp drives would help, but he couldn't use fantasy rockets for his experiments, no matter how popular they were. He was Earth-bound and unable to test his killer ideas off-planet.

He continued his focused research, sampling the time border for sounds passing the barrier. Microphones hung from his backpack, facing the past, looked for a chorus to sing a hole in the fabric of history. Sensors captured what could be called tiny banshee wails as noise beat against the time wall and died as the present became past.

Research is nothing else if not persistent, time-consuming, and boring. With enough sampling, he designed his time-wall-breaking speakers, ready to send the extrapolated noises back to the barrier.

He was ready to test out his theories or die trying. He stood in an isolated field, far from modern civilization's hustle, bustle, and noise.

A small drone, filled with the latest sampling tools, hovered a meter in front of the intrepid scientist. It was important to record his work for prosperity until the time wall passed his location and covered up the results.

"Here goes nothing!" As he flipped the switch and the manufactured banshees began their songs. The pitch varied, and sound levels fluctuated, looking for the exact frequency. He couldn't turn around to see the response, but a mirror displayed all he needed.

The air quivered, standing waves danced, and time itself responded. It only took a moment, a small piece of endless time may have opened, and our scientist disappeared.

No one knew if he succeeded or if the noise generators shook him apart at the molecular level. The effect was the same, and only time would tell.

It wasn't answering.